School of the Sword lead instructor, Fran Lacuata, was in Dorset this weekend teaching an introduction to Historical European Martial Arts course at the Ancient Technology Centre in Cranborne.
The course focused on teaching renaissance swordplay where participants could learn the basics of greatsword, sidesword, dagger, buckler and more!
Two of School of the Sword’s instructors were in the glorious sunshine and the rain this weekend at the Fightcamp Skirmish event hosted by Schola Gladiatoria. Adrian did a class on introduction to rapier and Fran taught an intro to Bolognese sword & buckler.
Two of our instructors will be heading to Germany in October to teach at the Swords of the Renaissance event in Potsdam. This event is dedicated to the different styles and weapons of the Renaissance. This is intended to provide an overview and provide space for exchange and experimentation.
Emilia will be running a class entitled “Fight like a Noble: bolognese sidesword at the Italian court” while Fran will be running a workshop on “Balance of power: offhand weapons in Bolognese fencing”.
Fightcamp is a long running UK event organised by our friends over at Schola Gladiatoria. It’s a fun weekend of camping, classes and camaraderie.
This year, three School of the Sword instructors were invited to teach. Fran ran a class on Anonimo Bolognese Poleaxe, Adrian ran a class on Active Buckler Defense and unfortunately the weather put a stop to Emilia’s class on dirty rapier tricks. All the students seemed to enjoy themselves, and it was good to catch up with members of the wider HEMA community after so long apart.
Today we held our opening of The School of the Sword Oxford, with Q&A sessions, mini classes, demonstrations and sparring.
We had an enthusiastic group of newcomers to HEMA who put in a great effort, and we look forward to welcoming them to our Beginners Course.
If you would like to sign up please fill in the registration form:
Fightcamp is the largest and longest running HEMA event in the UK, and three people from the School entered the Rapier tournament which resulted in three medals for the School! Congratulations to Adrian, Apollon and Alexander for achieving 3rd, 2nd and 1st place respectively.
Alexander went on to win silver in the longsword competition, first place went to Jack Gassmann who has also taught at the School in the past.
On 6-8 July we held the inaugural Albion Cup – a multi-discipline tournament event that we hope to reproduce each year. We had seventy attendees from the UK, France, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway and Italy. The weekend was blessed with beautiful sunshine and we picked a very pleasant venue in Belmont School, a beautiful site snuggled in the forests of the Surrey Hills in Holmbury St Mary near Dorking. Attendees were able to camp on site or sleep in the hall which made everything very manageable.
The tournaments began on Saturday with open longsword, followed by women’s sword & buckler and then rapier & dagger. There was a good showing of women in the S&B tournament and the quality of the fencing in all competitions was brilliant.
The first day ended in the form of entertainment with the “Renaissance Fencer” matches: a series of showfights between preselected pairs of fencers who train in multiple weapons. Each pair had to
fence continuously with matched weapons for two minutes each with a 1 minute break in between. The order was longsword, then sabre, then rapier & dagger and ending with sword & buckler. We had 4 pairs who took part including instructors Fran vs Emilia, and Piermarco vs Håvard Eidheim from Norway. It was a gruelling but fun spectacle and the crowd cheered on all the participants.
After a night of celebrations in the nearby pub, the second day picked up the packed schedule once more with sabre, then smallsword, open sword & buckler and women’s longsword – again with a very healthy number of participants which is encouraging to see. The quality of the fencing throughout was excellent, and we began the prizegiving with a traditional ‘Fechtschule’ where the participants each voted for the best technical fencer of the weekend. The clear winner was Håvard , and his prize was the coveted ‘Albion’ bastard sword: forged and sharpened by our platinum sponsors Balefire Blades.
The School put in a brilliant performance, in terms of competition, organisation and volunteering. Thank you to all that took part. Notable competitors are Adrian who climbed 26 places on HEMA Ratings, winning all his pool matches in rapier & dagger and sword & buckler. Another climber is Mikolaj who climbed a staggering 440 places in sword & buckler, also winning all of his pool fights. SotS Oxford leader Emilia climbed 22 places in women’s longsword to 25th, and Katie climbed an impressive 47 places, also in women’s longsword.
We take this opportunity to say thank you to all of our participants, we wouldn’t be able to put on such a big event without you. We especially thank our hard working volunteers, some of whom travelled great distances simply to donate their time and make the Albion Cup such a great success, and some who couldn’t event be there but put in the organisational hours just to make it happen. With gratitude to Jon Rolph, Sue Kirk, Alejandro Cortes Garcia, Chris & Alicia of Balefire who also acted as armourers for the event, James Wiggins, Artur Agustyniak, Stewart Hotston, Jay Maxwell, Richard Hughes, Emma Smith, Emma Holding, Jon Middleton, Josh Davis, Alexander Davis, Chris Bear, Dan Skellon and many more.
The organisational committee also included Pim, Fran, Masha, Matt, Adrian and Sasha.
And of course, the wonderful prizes and donations from our generous sponsors are what added sparkle to this fun event:
Special thanks to Enrica Angiolini Art for designing our logo.
The tournament finalists were as follows:
Women’s sword & buckler
1st Maria Makarova The School of the Sword
2nd Fran Terminiello The School of the Sword
3rd Hanne Eik Pilskog Fekteklubben Frie Duellister
Women’s Longsword
1st Tosca Beuming De Zwaardkring
2nd Emilia Cecylia Skirmuntt The School of the Sword
3rd Michela D’Orlando Ordine delle Lame Scaligere
Open sword and buckler
1st Alexander Makarov The School of the Sword
2nd Jay Maxwell The School of the Sword
3rd Håvard Lund Eidheim Fekteklubben Frie Duellister
Open Smallsword
1st Håvard Lund Eidheim Fekteklubben Frie Duellister
2nd Rowan Skilbeck Waterloo Sparring Group
3rd Jay Maxwell The School of the Sword
Open longsword
1st Alexander Makarov The School of the Sword
2nd Thomas Couturier La Salle d’Armes – Escrime Ancienne: SA-EA
3rd Federico Dall’Olio La Salle d’Armes – Escrime Ancienne: SA-EA
Open sabre
1st Tim Fuke London Longsword Academy
2nd Rowan Skilbeck Waterloo Sparring Group
3rd Pedro San Miguel Schola Gladiatoria
Open rapier and dagger
1st Håvard Lund Eidheim Fekteklubben Frie Duellister
2nd Alexander Makarov The School of the Sword
3rd Matthew Crane The School of the Sword
Best technical fencer overall – as voted by all attendees:
Håvard Lund Eidheim Fekteklubben Frie Duellister
Well done to all the finalists!
Thanks to Richard Hughes for the photos.
Recently we held a summer social event consisting of a potluck and test cutting session, it was a lot of fun and a great opportunity to get the students from Reading and Godalming together. Lead instructors Fran and Matt, of Godalming and Reading respectively, took the opportunity to announce the annual awards:
The Scholarship Award
This is given to the student who has stood out for their research and interpretive work on historical fencing texts. This can be someone at any level but given that the Laureando and Spadaccino gradings both contain a written submission it tends to be students at these stages in their careers who are eligible. The prize is cash to be spent on fencing books or manuals, and the nominees (pending receipt and review of their written laureando pieces) are:
Kasten Harris
Simon Bowers
Josh Davis
Dan Skellon
The Endeavour Award
When a student reaches a certain level of competence: demonstrates good all round skill with weapons, applies themselves in class and demonstrates an adherence to the texts and techniques taught, they are eligible for the Endeavour Award. We grant this to the student who demonstrates all of the above and who we believe will make an excellent ambassador for the School. The prize is cash towards travel, accomodation and entry to an international event.
This year’s Endeavour Award goes to:
James Barker
The Dagger of Honour
This is our highest honour. The Dagger of Honour is the oldest award within the School and it is given to the student who has stood out in their services to the School, this can be in any number of ways.
This year’s winner has worked incredibly hard on the behalf of SotS: whether that’s travelling to teach workshops, to participate in tournaments (and win!), or arranging sponsorships and fantastic prizes with suppliers for the events that the school is involved in organising. The English Sidesword Open was the brainchild of this individual, and we thank them for their vision, passion and enthusiasm that inspired us to make it such a successful event, and we plan to repeat in years to come.
The winner of the Dagger of Honour 2018 was an easy decision, and that person is Jay Maxwell.
Well done to all the winners and nominees!
Senior Sots instructors Fran and Lizzie held this event for its second year in Godalming on 17 & 18 March. It was attended by over forty women – several Sots members among them – and all the classes were led by female instructors, including Emilia Skirmuntt who has taught as a guest instructor in Reading (and will soon be teaching rapier again in Godalming) and Maria Makarova: also from the School. Other instructors were Steph West from 1595 Club and TerryAnn Towers St Amand, who led the warm up and cooldown. There were classes in Fiore Longsword grapples, Saviolo Sidesword and Italian rapier.
The second day started with a Q&A panel with the instructors, chaired by Fran, followed by a novice tournament using boffers, and a steel tournament. In each competition there were randomly chosen but paired weapons.
Next year’s event is already in the can, with ten instructors and speakers! Watch this space.
